Hi, I am a research assistant at the University of Stuttgart at the Institute of Control Engineering (ISW) and work there in the areas of communication/service concepts for automation systems and cloud manufacturing. Among other things with projects like RetroNet I got in contact with several older automation protocols (ADS, S7, Profinet/bus..) and also more recent ones like OPC UA and their diversity despite the common goal. That's how I got to know Chris, Julian and the initial PLC4X crew :)
Before that I completed a study in software engineering. My main programming language would be Java, but I already had a lot of stacks in my hands (Javascript, C++, Python, Go, C#, Ada, PHP). I like to sharpen knives and sometimes distil some schnapps. So if someone wants to forget a bug, you can choose between 40 - 80% alcohol content and 5 flavours ;) If Toddy leaves some. At the moment I'm working on the OPC UA integration of Milo into PLC4J with the documentation (Pls Toddy stop hurting me! ) and a bridge server for the OPC UA representation of other protocols in an extra integrated OPC UA server. Our institute is quite experienced in TSN and OPC Companion specifications. Therefore I try to integrate the project into publicly funded research projects to make PLC4X more known and to support the community. Greetings Matthias ________________________________ Von: Christofer Dutz <christofer.d...@c-ware.de> Gesendet: Dienstag, 5. Mai 2020 13:23:42 An: dev@plc4x.apache.org Betreff: [Introduction] Christofer Dutz Hi all, I have noticed that our tram has grown quite a bit in the last year and most of you I have never met personally. We have been discussing a lot of things here on the list and on slack, but I only have little background on who you folks actually are. So I would like to ask anyone interested to just introduce himself in this thread. I’ll start: My name is Christofer Dutz, I’m currently 42 years old and studied computer-science at the University of Darmstadt. I’m the son of an Electro-Engineer and therefore already had contact with all of this automation stuff when I was a kid, but somehow lost contact when I discovered my interest in computers. Being an IT guy living near Frankfurt (Germany) there is almost no chance to not work for Banks and Insurance companies. So I guess I’ve been working for about 12 different Banks and Insurance companies in the last 15 years. I always like to compare working for a bank like asking Picasso to paint a portrait, but to have him wear a mental-institution restraining jacket and have him paint with a brush in his mouth. End of the first quarter of 2017 it was getting so unbearable for me, that I was thinking about giving up my profession as an IT specialist and even starting to learn something new. I was already looking for companies looking for an apprentice as carpenter, when I had another round of self-reflection. Even if I probably would have been good as a carpenter, I still love doing my job, just not for Banks and Insurance companies. I was seeing the same with a lot of my colleagues. It was that time that Industry 4.0 was everywhere … all the problems are easily addressable with open-source and a lot of the skills I have from the banking would have been a perfect match. So I had a look at what’s missing in this big picture and pretty quickly noticed the data-access problem is the biggest barrier and no solution being available or in sight. Luckily at codecentric we have something called “Innovation budget”. Here if you’ve got an idea, you can pitch in some shark-tank-like session with the board and if they like it, you get the funds for doing that. My idea was to build a universal protocol adapter. From the beginning I said I want this to be a true open-source project at Apache. The benefit for codecentric would be to eliminate the barriers to offering IIoT solutions with our large set of professionals in all areas this involves. The board agreed and for the last 3,5 years I have been paid by codecentric to work on Apache PLC4X full-time. Outside of the IT world, I love to do sports with others, so I’m usually in the gym in some workout and TaeBo courses about 3 times a week, I love snowboarding and everything that has anything to do with water. Another huge passion of mine is melodic electronic music, so usually I travel around the Europe visiting different electronic music festivals. I live in a town called Ober-Ramstadt together with my girlfriend Tanja, where we just moved into a house I inherited from my grandpa and which we renovated in 2 years of hard work … and still the work doesn’t end … so some-times I fall off the face of the earth for a few days cause I’m probably digging trenches for the foundation for some wall, or my rain-water system, or … or … or …. Guess the digging never stops. Ok … so I hope this gives you a little impression on who I am and what drives me … it would make me happy to see some of you folks also introduce yourself. And I would even more love to have a beer with you (Or, as I’m a hessian … a big glass of apple wine) 😉 Chris
